1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile communication terminal, and more particularly to a method for inputting a password in a mobile communication terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Commonly, a mobile communication terminal has a plurality of keys, about twelve ones of which can be assigned characters. In Korea, one number, two or three English characters and Korean consonants or vowels are assigned to each of the keys in the mobile communication terminal. These keys will hereinafter be referred to as character keys. The mobile communication terminal generally has a keypad including such character keys, as illustrated in FIG. 1. FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional keypad configuration. Any one of characters assigned to one character key can be input by pressing the character key one time or repeatedly. For example, in order to input an English character ‘K’ to the mobile communication terminal through a key (hereinafter referred to as a “key 5”) assigned three English characters ‘J’, ‘K’ and ‘L’, two Korean consonants ‘’ and ‘’ and a number ‘5’, a user has to successively input the key 5 twice in an English character input mode. At this time, a control unit of the terminal displays the English character ‘K’ as desired by the user on a display screen of the terminal by recognizing the type of the inputted character key and counting the number of inputs of that key. That is, in response to the first input of the key 5, the control unit displays ‘J’ on the display screen. Subsequently, upon receiving the second input of the key 5 within a predetermined period of time from the first input, the control unit changes ‘J’ to ‘K’ and then displays ‘K’ on the display screen. The user can identify the inputted characters by viewing the displayed characters.
Such a character input method may be also applied in the same manner to the input of a password. However, when a password is inputted, any character key inputted by the user is generally displayed as a special character * or # on the display screen in order to maintain security. For this reason, when a password with a combination of English characters and Korean characters is inputted, the user cannot identify characters actually being input, nor can the user determine whether the password has been correctly input.
Alternatively, if the mobile communication terminal is constructed to display the input characters without using a special character * or # on the display screen as they are when a password with a combination of English characters and Korean characters is input, security will not be maintained.